There are several architectures for transmitting information from one electronic device to another. A commonly used architecture is shown in FIG. 1A. In this architecture the devices share a common communication structure, often called a data bus or communication bus. In this architecture, each device connected to the data bus can transmit information on the data bus, or receive any information transmitted on the data bus. In addition the information transmitted on the data bus can pass undistorted through each of the devices. Examples of such buses are Mil-Std-1553, CAN, FlexRay and others.
A large number of devices can be connected to data buses as described above. A potential problem in these data buses is that a fault in the data bus would prevent the passage of information from devices before and after the fault. U.S. Pat. No. 7,812,617 to the same assignee, describes a method to identify the fault in a communication bus. The method is based on identifying reflections in the communication bus. The reflections are caused by the fault in one of the communication bus links and are referred to as ‘signal tail’. U.S. Pat. No. 7,812,617 suggest a method of identifying the location of the fault by measuring the timing of such multiple tails, and using triangulation to identify the location of a fault.
Examples of a fault are a mechanical cut or other form of disconnect in one of the data bus wires. During the occurrence of such a fault the transmitted data on the data bus would be received with a large number of errors which can reduce the utilization of the data bus to less than 10% of its original capacity. It is desirable to provide a data bus architecture which can reduce the number of transmission errors in the event of a fault in the differential data bus.